VERN has been reviewing movies since 1999 and is the author of the books SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL, YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER!: WRITINGS ON BRUCE WILLIS, BADASS CINEMA AND OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS and NIKETOWN: A NOVEL. His horror-action novel WORM ON A HOOK will arrive later this year.

This entry was posted
on Thursday, January 10th, 2013 at 5:15 am and is filed under Blog Post (short for weblog).
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

36 Responses to “Oscar shit here”

Bigelow is the only headscratching snub I notice. Didn’t think DJANGO would get a best picture nomination, but happy for it of course. Did not get up this early to see Seth McFarlane do his smarmy scripted quips about the nominees and wacky Hollywood. Hope that doesn’t set a precedent.

Yeah I can’t believe Bigelow wasn’t nominated. (I still haven’t seen the movie yet though). I also haven’t seen Beasts of the Southern Wild but it’s always exciting to root for the underdog (that would be crazy if Quvenzhané Wallis won Best Actress).

If somehow Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert DeNiro, and Jacki Weaver all win for Silver Linings Playbook, would that be the first time a movie has won all the acting categories?

How did Skyfall get a nom for Best Song? I thought they’ve been huge sticklers about songs not sampling or utilizing ANYTHING previously written, and it’s pretty obvious it uses the original James Bond theme in it.

Can’t believe Mccaughney didn’t get a nod, if not so much for the individual performance in Magic Mike, for a year where he took genuine risks and became a real actor instead of a handsome movie star. All the dudes who got supporting actor nominations have already won an Oscar – boring. It should have gone to Killer Joe.

I have no idea how Bigelow is not nominated for director. Which by direct consequence hinders Chastain’s chances. And again, I have no idea how that happened. But Meryl Streep beat Viola last year and I screamed at the tv. So I guess it has happened.

The real what the fuck has to be all of the love for Life of Pi. That movie should not be anywhere near some of these films.

Can’t. Quite. Remember. the exact moment that you can specifically identify the shift, but when it happens it’s as powerful, jaw-dropping, and comically baffling as the darkest & darkest-ly humorous parts of BLACK SWAN (and BLACK SWAN is the best movie of the past 8+ years, so this is as high a praise-y comment as I can imagine).

Everyone (except motherfucking Vern – review this shit, man!) talks about the “K fried C” sequence, but I am of the belief that the conversation just before that notorious bit of shocking debauchery is the key part of the film KILLER JOE. They sit peacefully, familial-ly, but tensely, at the trailer’s dinner table.

I believe it starts with the line, “What about Rex?”

But perhaps *the* key line is, “Whose dick is that?”

This is the point where our identification shifts. Joe *was* the bad guy, the disrupting, satanic force, but suddenly he becomes the family therapist, the psychiatrist with piercing insights into this family who, up to this point, had been the protagonists, for better or worse (mostly worse), of the movie. With this one line, this one line of inquiry, Joe takes on the role of film noir private eye, a neutral observer interested (or self-interested) in discovering truth.

He proceeds to demonstrate that, yes, he is a fucking monster, but, for a not-minor beat in this movie, he is the audience surrogate. It’s fucking amazing, this transition from evil to sympathy/empathy within this one absurd, psychopathic character, all because he has certain knowledge, some detective intuitions that make him the Martha Raddatz or Maury Povich figure betwixt the political/domestic opponents of Gina Gershon & Thomas Haden Church who now will face off to see who is the 2nd-worst person in the scene. Somehow Joe becomes a champion of truth & justice, though he’s the most fucked up person in the movie, if not the entire fucked-up world.

I’m glad Alexandre Desplat was nominated for Original Score, though I wish it had been for ZERO DARK THIRTY instead of ARGO. He scored ARGO, ZERO DARK THIRTY, and MOONRISE KINGDOM this year. Strong and varied stuff.

I’m shocked by the snubs for Bigelow, Affleck and Tarantino in the directing category. Can’t believe the mediocre LES MISERABLES got soooooooo many nominations. I am glad though about BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD, especially the best actress nomination. I had hoped SKYFALL would get a best picture nom and Javier Bardem would be nominated after seeing the eight BAFTAs it’s up for including best British film.

Yeah, pegsman, congratulations on KON-TIKI. Whenever a Norwegian film exists, we Americans assume you and all your dozens of fellow countrymen somehow helped make it happen, like volunteers at a local Habitat for Humanity house. What’d you do on this one: grip? Catering? Production assistant? Stunts? Good job, whatever it was; I’m sure you’re listed in the credits like all other Norwegians are. Finally you all have something to be proud of in a non-Winter Olympics year.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS 2012 has to be Anne Hathaway in BATMAN 3.

Like 2011’s Elle Fanning role in SUPER 8, it’s shocking how much better she is than anyone & everyone around her. She’s elevated above the rest of the cast by how much more she gets out of the movie’s silly script (that makes it sound like she’s trying too hard, or overacting), and she puts everyone else to shame by dint of her humble commitment to her lines & motivations (it all comes so naturally to her, not overacting at all). This is the essence of Striving For Excellence.

You can read each of her scenes, and the themes of the movie, in just her facial expressions and changes in vocal volume. She gives a one-woman acting workshop. That might sound like a hack-y compliment, but seriously, she does. She demonstrates wonderful range, going from despair to humor, teammate to traitor, idealistic anarchist to resigned establishmentarian, selfish bitch to horny hero, flawlessly within the span of a second

(watch her unease as she hands over the cell phone to Bane’s partner, pretending to be scared, trying to ask for what she needs in the bargain but evidently happy just to be alive as she deals with these rough men, then all revealed as an act when she devilishly states whose cell phone it is, when she becomes a violent badass, when we realize how manipulative & powerful she must be to have fooled them so daringly and to have this other important man reduced to a brain-dead puppy dog in her presence, before she then transforms before our eyes again and pretends to be the helpless little lady witness, screaming in the corner like any senseless innocent non-accomplice to a crime, just a pretty girl who happens to be there when the police arrive at the scene to find the politician she had kidnapped — all amazing stuff, and just one brief example of her amazingness),

As you know, Mouth, this is the second KON-TIKI movie that gets nominated for an Oscar, so my job in the Norwegian film industry is to develop new stories that involve rafts, since that’s what the academy obviously wants.

So I finally saw PARANORMAN and if this one doesn’t win the animation Oscar, I’m gonna cry. Okay, I only saw one other nominated movie (WRECK-IT RALPH), but they have to be DAMN great, to be better than PARANORMAN (both on a technical and script level.) It even jumped straight to the #1 spot in my list of favourite movies from 2012. (With apologies to Joseph Khan. But I still keep recommending DETENTION to everybody who hasn’t seen it, I promise.)

I really want to see ParaNorman, but my oldest kid won’t watch it because it looks sCary and hubby won’t rent it with me because he wants to watch Looper. My youngest says he wants to be a vampire for Halloween next yer and keeps freaking his brother out by pretending to be a zombie, which consists of him wandering after his brother saying “zombie” in silly scary voice. I need to build on this, I think.

I would love to see the majority of this years’ nominees, but they all need to just come out on DVD or OnDemand so I can see them. Still happy I got to see Django in the theatre, though! Still mad that I wasted valuable theatre time in the summer watching Totall Recall That There Were Better Films In Theaters in August.

You know your kids better than I do obviously, but if you watch PARANORMAN with them, you should have seen it by yourself first. I know that kids can take much more than most adults remember, but as hilarious this movie is, as you can expect from a Leika production, it gets pretty macabre at times and has some seriously dark story beats.

Hey, I totally agree with you. I know that as a kid, I didn’t mind people getting killed on screen as much as I do now. But to be honest, it’s not the zombies in the movie that I think might be too scary (because they are portrayed funny enough), it’s more the whole backstory of the witch, that could freak some kids out. Okay, if they have watched or read HARRY POTTER, they might be used to that, but “watch it first without your kids” is an advice that I give to every parent, when it comes to certain movies. Some kids can take THE THING, some already get freaked out by the ID monster from FORBIDDEN PLANET.

I was really impressed with Paranorman. I think the one thing in that film that would be most difficult for kids to take is not the scary stuff (although that might be tough for younger kids) but the fact that Norman’s dad is so mean. I’ve seen kids pick on other kids in family films, but I was surprised by how much disdain the dad showed towards his son. It was a gutsy thing to put in the movie.

Um, this has nothing to do with the Oscars, but it is a trailer for a movie that has a minor supporting role for Dolph Lundgren, and it seems he’s doing something akin to Patrick Swayze’s role in Donnie Darko. The movie itself looks either terrible or amazing, depending on your mood and tolerance of “quirk.”

So I watched The Artist last night. Now I’m finally caught up for watching last year’s Oscars. I am doing slightly better this year; I’ll be caught up by maybe summer for this year’s ceremony. At least Argo will be out on DVD in February. Lincoln isn’t getting released until March. Fuckers.

As for The Artist, I think it’s better I watched it long after the hype was over. It allowed me to enjoy the movie on its own merits.